Enrico Rava : New York Days (Ocrd)

New all-star quintet session features trumpeter Enrico Rava, the greatest Italian jazz musician, and his prot g, pianist Stefano Bollani,, together with three leading American jazzmen: master drummer Paul Motian, bassist Larry Grenadier, and, in his ECM debut, saxophonist Mark Turner. The CD is both a transatlantic project and a kind of 'homecoming'. Rava found his musical direction while living in New York in the late 60s/early 70s. Since then an increasingly 'Italian' lyricism has also made itself felt in his playing. Rava's soulful trumpet is strongly contrasted with the lean, analytical playing of Mark Turner. Bollani's playful harmonic imagination shapes bridges between them. Larry Grenadier is 'present and focused in every moment' as Rava says, and Paul Motian is as idiosyncratically creative as ever.